


Three Hundred and Seventy-Four Blinks

by gaytectives



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drugs, Infidelity, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 03:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3836038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaytectives/pseuds/gaytectives
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s blinked exactly three hundred and sixty-nine times, and so he can calculate that it has been nearly twenty one minutes since the last time he asked the time.<br/>That would mean that it’s now two thirty-three A.M., and four hours have passed since he and John awoke and discovered that they’d been locked in a steel shipping crate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Hundred and Seventy-Four Blinks

**Author's Note:**

> it took me three billion years, but this is a completed commission for ashton [uchihaaz](http://uchihaaz.tumblr.com/). big hugs and thank-yous to nitika [crylock](http://crylock.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing and helping me decide on a title!

Sherlock stares up at the steel ceiling above him and it stares back.

Earlier, he remembered that the average person blinks somewhere close to twenty times per minute, so he decided to test it. After multiple trials and two threats of strangulation, he ascertained that he blinks eighteen times a minute.

He’s blinked exactly three hundred and sixty-nine times, and so he can calculate that it has been nearly twenty one minutes since the last time he asked the time.

That would mean that it’s now two thirty-three A.M., and four hours have passed since he and John awoke and discovered that they’d been locked in a steel shipping crate.

Three hundred and seventy-four blinks.

 

-

 

Coughing and retching was what brought Sherlock back to consciousness the first time. His bleary, blurred eyes had scanned the dim room until he found the source of the sound.

“Sorry,” John choked out, spitting on the floor and breathing heavily. “I think someone drugged us.”

Sherlock passed again out before he could agree.

 

-

 

“Moriarty?”

“Dead,” Sherlock sighs.

“Are you sure?”

“I watched him shoot himself in the head, John. I’m almost positive.”

“Almost?”

“That’s positive times ten in normal standards,” Sherlock says. “Don’t think about it.”

“God, I don’t know,” John huffs. He rubs his forehead so forcefully that it leaves a red mark visible even in the dull glow of their lone kerosene lantern. “General Chan?”

“She was a smuggler, not a kidnapper.”

“Who the hell was it, then?”

“Why do you expect I know?” Sherlock asks, exasperated. “I don’t know everyone on earth. I can figure out motives, not who’s behind them, not without sufficient information.”

“Being drugged and locked in a shipping crate isn’t sufficient enough for you?” John spits.

“I didn’t know who Moriarty was until he’d slapped a few bombs on you and threatened to kill us both, in _person_ ,” Sherlock continues, ignoring John’s malice.

John grunts frustratedly and crosses his arms. “This is unbelievable.”

“I wouldn’t say that, considering our track record.”

The lantern flares and shapes dance across the ceiling.

“It does seem like Moriarty, though,” Sherlock whispers, watching the light above him. “Not exactly like him - he’d make it more clear who was doing it. He was a narcissist. The method, though - kidnapping us from our own home, it’s something he’d do. Grandiose. Whoever this is acts more carefully, though. To keep themselves safe.”

“What a forward thinker,” John mutters gruffly.

 

-

 

Sherlock finds himself looking over to John instead of at the ceiling.

Last night was the first time they’d been in a room together for more than ten minutes in over a month. Though opportunities had risen, Sherlock had avoided them. After the wedding, he couldn’t handle it.

The confession was constantly there. On the verge of disclosure. Any time he so much as looked at John, it crowded his throat and choked him.

He’d invited John to dinner so he could let it out. Just to get it off his chest - there was no way, in his mind, that he’d be able to hold onto it any longer, and John was newly married, about to have a child, so how could there be any better time?

Someone had, apparently, thought the same thing about this kidnapping. _They’re together. It’s perfect._

“You okay, Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s eyes focus and his chest tightens when he meets John’s eyes. “Fine,” he says nonchalantly. One thousand, one hundred and sixteen blinks. “Time?”

John sighs and lifts his watch. “Three fourteen,” he says.

“I have perfected my eye clock,” Sherlock informs him softly.

Something about the statement makes John smile. “Of course you have.”

 

-

 

“Crate.”

“Dark.”

“Night.”

“Sleep.”

“Pointless.”

“Sleep isn’t pointless, Sherlock.”

“I was referring to this game.”

“I wonder how many words I could associate with ‘Sherlock Holmes’.”

“You have a poor vocabulary, in the time we’ve known each other you’ve hardly strayed outside thirty different descriptors.”

“Prick.”

“That’s number eighteen on the list.”

 

-

 

“Is your stomach feeling better?” Sherlock asks softly. The lantern glow makes John look warm and Sherlock wants to curl up to him, around him - the steel floor is freezing and he’s been lying off to one side, isolated, since they woke up.

“Yeah, thanks,” John mumbles. He’s staring at his hands, twiddling his thumbs. “Must not react well to rohypnol.”

“You think it was roofies?”

“Symptoms fit best,” John says, glancing up at Sherlock. “Do you think it’s something else?”

“No, I agree,” Sherlock says, nodding. His temple rubs against the cold floor and he wonders how pathetic he must look, curled into a ball on his side, knees clutched to his chest. It feels nice, though. Safe where safety is lacking. “It only narrows down the potential suspects by a margin but it’s something.”

“They got it into our food,” John notes, “that’s got to mean something.”

“Able to intercept Chinese delivery, yes, a very particular skillset,” Sherlock snorts. The joke brings a small smile to John’s face and the sight floods Sherlock’s heart with warmth.

“What’s that look on your face?” John asks.

The warmth turns anxiously cold but Sherlock tries to maintain his smile. “I could be trapped in a steel shipping container with worse people,” he says, nearly whispering.

John laughs and shakes his head. “I’m flattered,” he says, smiling. He looks right at Sherlock, who wants to melt into the floor.

The confession is there again on the tip of his tongue and he feels sick.

He’d say it if he knew when they were getting out of this stupid box. He could say it and run. He wouldn’t have to wait around to see the fall of John’s expression, the realisation on his face that nothing between them would ever be the same. He’d see their time together, from before, through a completely different filtre.

Sherlock would lose his best - his _only_ \- friend. And yet, the pain of keeping this little, life-changing bit of information inside of him, is so _agonising_ that he realises he’s already halfway to saying something, lips parted, staring across the way at John.

“You okay?” John asks softly.

“Just a bit dizzy,” Sherlock manages. “Probably dehydrated.”

John nods. “Yeah, me too. Wonder if anyone even knows we’re gone yet.”

“Time loss is a common symptom of rohypnol usage, so it’s likely that many hours have passed since we were drugged and Mary has probably noticed you haven’t returned home, yet.”

A bit of pink rises to John’s cheeks at the mention of his wife. Sherlock assumes it’s because, even married, John worries about who will ‘talk.’

“Actually,” John says, clearing his throat a bit, piquing Sherlock’s interest, “we’re, ah - we had a fight, haven’t really… resolved it, yet.”

Sherlock has the decency to feel guilty at the amount of excitement that bubbles up inside of him. “Oh,” he says simply.

“Just stupid stuff,” John excuses, shrugging. “We’ll work through it.”

Sherlock can see how it’s bothering him, though. _Domestic bliss_. Mycroft’s voice echoes inside Sherlock’s head. It’s not everything it’s cracked up to be, then.

“But that means we’re back to square one as for getting out of here,” John continues, looking around the container. “Whoever did this did a bloody good job of sealing us up. I hope we aren’t on the Atlantic somewhere.”

“I’d know if we were on the ocean,” Sherlock promises, mind still reeling at the lovely (horrid, absolutely horrid) idea of John’s marriage already beginning to fall apart. “There’s a reason we’ve never taken any cases involving boats.”

“Seasickness?” John asks, grinning impishly.

“My single downfall,” Sherlock says, eyes crinkling around the edges.

 

-

 

Two thousand, four hundred, thirty-eight blinks. 04:27 in a steel world where time probably doesn’t exist anymore. Sherlock has been thinking about John’s potential failure of a marriage for over half an hour and he wonders just how terrible of a friend he is if he balances out his joy at John’s poorly relationship with the fact that he’s in love with the man.

 

-

 

The little wheeze in John’s laughter warms Sherlock to his very core.

“Oh my god, you liar,” John says, grinning madly. “That’s not a disagreement, you had him _arrested_.”

“He was a thief, he deserved to be arrested,” Sherlock insists, lips curled into a smile at the edges. He’s sat up now, leaning against the steel wall, knees still to his chest, but loosely. “It’s not _my_ fault he was taking priceless artifacts from museums.”

“No, but it’s definitely your fault you ended up without a flat,” John laughs. “When you have your landlord arrested, they tend to be a bit tetchy about it.”

“It isn’t as though he’d have to see me every day; he went to prison. I could have continued living there for three years before he had to kick me out.”

“Karma doesn’t quite work that way.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Sherlock agrees, “if my getting kicked out was karma then I wouldn’t have met you. The universe was rewarding me for putting away a criminal.”

John scoffs and shakes his head. “What good is a new toy if it comes broken in the package?” he asks, still chuckling, but with less mirth.

Sherlock furrows his brow at the self-deprecating tone of John’s voice. “I don’t understand,” he says. The happy mood inside the crate dissipates entirely.

“I’m saying that the universe did a ruddy bad job of rewarding you if you think I was the reward,” John says. “Come on, Sherlock. I mean… god, have a look at what our life was like before you… dropped off the face of the earth for two years. It was a mess.”

“Perfection is an impossibility,” Sherlock says, looking into the lanternlight instead of at John, “but I have to imagine that if anything has ever come close to it, that is what our life was.”

John blinks at him a few time. “Come off it,” he says.

“I am serious,” Sherlock promises.

“Sherlock, we both nearly died a dozen times, we were broke - near the end both our reputations were in the garbage - ”

“We were happy together,” Sherlock interrupts softly. “At least, I was happy. I see now that it must have been different in your case, but… I was happy. We had the work, we had cases, we had excitement and distraction. I had you, and that was enough for me, because I have never had a friend who appeared to care as strongly for me as I did for him.”

“Sherlock,” John says.

“I understand that I may have misinterpreted a few things, but I thought you were happy.”

“I was,” John promises. “I was, Sherlock. Despite all the rubbish, and the… biohazardous kitchen experiments, and nearly dying, I… I was happy. I’m sorry, really, I am. I shouldn’t have said all that.”

“Why did you?” Sherlock asks, looking up. “If you didn’t mean it, why did you say it?”

John works his jaw, taking his turn to look away from eye contact. “I get down about myself. You’ve seen it. It’s… hard to think highly of yourself around someone who’s so much _more_ than you are.”

“I know,” Sherlock whispers. John turns his gaze to meet Sherlock’s and the confession is on the tip of Sherlock’s tongue again.

“Come off it,” John repeats.

“That’s part of the vocabulary thing I mentioned earlier,” Sherlock says hurriedly. “You need new phrases.”

“Sherlock, what did you mean?” John asks, keeping him from derailing the conversation.

“It’s nothing, nevermind it.”

“Sherlock.”

“You are one of the only people who has seen the good in me,” Sherlock admits. It falls out of him, a confession different from the one now retreating to the back of his throat. “It’s difficult to keep up a front of self-importance when day in and out people insult and demean you because of your behavioural differences and cognitive intelligence. You have only seen me act in flippant regard to such things, but they were happening long before you came around, and long before I was even as insulting as many people consider me now. Revealing people’s personal lives is a defence, not an attack. I protect myself by threatening them with information. I have never needed to do this with you. You understand me.”

He blinks away tears and sighs brusquely. “To me, you were a gift. Some high and great form of amends, making up for years of abuse. It is an insult to us both to consider yourself otherwise, so please refrain from doing so.”

A cold silence falls between them and Sherlock does his best to control his breathing, turning his gaze away from John’s.

“I wasn’t imagining it,” John whispers. Sherlock’s heart pounds harder in his chest and he doesn’t look up. “What I saw at the wedding, I didn’t imagine it, did I?”

“What did you see?” Sherlock asks cautiously.

“The way you looked, the way you acted, you were so… pleasant, and it was nice, but it was weird, and then… On the dance floor, after, you gave me this look, like…” John pauses. “If… If I say it, and I’m wrong, I’m going to sound like an arse.”

Sherlock swallows hard, pulls his knees tightly to his chest. “You’re not wrong,” he whispers.

“Sherlock, you don’t know - ”

“I know,” Sherlock interrupts. “Balance of probability, you’re not wrong. You are exceptionally, agonisingly right.”

“Sherlock,” John whispers.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” Sherlock says. He feels his eyes watering again; it’s pathetic. Childish. “You were happy and I didn’t want to tell you, but it was destroying me. I was going to tell you last night, just to get it out, and you wouldn’t have to see me again.” He shakes his head hard. “I didn’t want to tell you. I tried to stop talking.”

“I know,” John says, “I made you keep going, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Sherlock.”

“I didn’t want to tell you,” Sherlock repeats. There’s a scuffling of shoes against the floor and John sits down beside Sherlock a moment later. Sherlock doesn’t look up, staring at the lantern, distorted by the water in his eyes. “I love you, and it’s wrong. I apologise.”

“Don’t apologise, Sherlock.” John puts a hand on his shoulder and the gentle contact feels so warm and safe that tears push past the dams of Sherlock’s eyelids and he rubs his face harshly. “It’s not… it’s not wrong,” John says. It sounds like he’s trying to assure himself of the fact as well.

“This is pitiful,” Sherlock spits. “I’m a grown adult, I should be able to handle this.”

“Handle it?”

“It shouldn’t be affecting me. I’ve been pushing it down for years, I have practise, I’m practically an expert. Seeing you married, it… Mycroft was right, I shouldn’t have got involved.”

“Years?” John breathes.

“But I couldn’t say no,” Sherlock mumbles, eyes welling up again. John had said Sherlock was his best friend. It meant the world. He stands quickly, barely remembering to duck and not hit his head on the metal ceiling. He starts pacing, muttering to himself, “ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, why hasn’t anyone found us yet? It’s been ages.”

“Years,” John says again, slightly louder.

Sherlock looks around at him hotly. “Yes, years, it’s pathetic, forget it.”

“Years, and you didn’t tell me,” John says, standing slowly. There’s an edge to his tone that pricks the nape of Sherlock’s neck.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Sherlock tells him hesitantly. “I thought… if you knew, I thought you’d leave.”

“You idiot,” John whispers. “You massive, unbelievable, _idiot_.” He steps toward Sherlock, working his jaw. “I thought, all that time, that you were some… cold, unfeeling… _robot_.” The word stings and Sherlock’s breath stutters in his chest. “You acted like I didn’t mean anything. I thought you _killed_ yourself, and I thought it was my fault. I grieved you for two years, I said ‘I love you’ to a headstone, and you _let me marry someone else_.”

The realisation dawns on Sherlock and he swears his heart falls to the ground and bloodies the steel floor. “I didn’t know,” he whispers. John steps forward and the empty cavity of Sherlock’s chest aches. “I didn’t - I didn’t see - ”

“Of all the fucking things not to see,” John whispers bitterly. He moves contrary to his tone, stepping close to Sherlock and putting a hand on his chest.

Sherlock goes still and breathes shallowly. “And now you’re married,” he says.

“And now I’m married,” John echoes, holding Sherlock’s gaze firmly.

“And you’re going to have a child,” Sherlock whispers. He leans in slightly and John tips his head up a bit.

“And I’m going to have a child,” John mumbles. His eyes flicker to Sherlock’s lips and Sherlock’s throat goes dry. _He can’t_ , Sherlock thinks, eyes now locked on John’s lips as well. _This is wrong. Half the cases I see weekly are completely based on crimes of passion and revenge. John and I both will end up dead in a hotel room somewhere_. John’s fingers curl into the lapel of Sherlock’s jacket, and his shallow breath hitches when John steps closer, chest pressed to Sherlock’s.

“You - really shouldn’t,” Sherlock breathes.

“Lots of people do things they shouldn’t,” John reasons. “Whoever drugged us shouldn’t have done it, but here we are, locked in a fucking shipping container.” Sherlock nods slightly. It makes sense. “I shouldn’t, but I want to. I’ve wanted to for ages.” His gaze lifts from Sherlock’s lips to his eyes. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes,” Sherlock exhales hurriedly.

John lets out a little growl and pulls him down by the collar and kisses him, breath hot in Sherlock’s mouth, and Sherlock’s awkward hands rest on John’s hips. He parts his lips and John’s hand crawls up to his hair, gripping firmly, and Sherlock almost whimpers, _god_ , it feels good. By all means it shouldn’t be happening, and perhaps it’s some wet dream as a result of being drugged, but it’s wonderful all the same. The clock in his head has stopped because his eyes are squeezed shut tightly, the tip of his nose brushing John’s cheek as they kiss. Blood floods his cheeks and his groin and one of his hands reaches around John’s back to press John closer still.

“Fuck,” John whispers, nipping at Sherlock’s lower lip. “God, I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

“Idiot,” Sherlock mutters. “I’m a blind, blind idiot.”

John kisses him again, more unyielding than the first time, tongue pressing into Sherlock’s mouth, both of them groaning at the feeling. John pushes, walking them until Sherlock feels the wall against his back. John’s hips press to his and he thinks, _just once, just once, just once_.

A loud, metal clanking sounds and John pulls back suddenly, cheeks flushed, lips pink and plumped.

“Christ, here you are.” The beam of a torch shines into the container and Sherlock squints against the light, making out just a few figures. “We’ve gone through the fucking lot,” Lestrade continues.

“‘Bout time,” John says, licking his lips. Sherlock thinks he hears regret in the words and his heart pounds in his chest.

 _It’s over_ , he thinks. His throat constricts. He didn’t even get _half_ of once.

“Well, once we caught her it was a lot easier to find you,” Lestrade says. He looks over to Sherlock, brows furrowing. “You alright?”

Sherlock nods, head clouded. _It’s over_. “Her?” he asks, trying to detract from whatever Lestrade may be wondering about the situation. He reaches up and attempts to nonchalantly flatten his hair, mussed up where John was grabbing it.

Lestrade’s expression falters and he looks over to John. “Mate, I’ve got some bloody bad news for you.”

Sherlock’s heart stops and he looks over to John quickly.

“What?” John asks, red gone from his cheeks.

Lestrade purses his lips. “You’re not gonna like who did this to you.”

John touches his wedding ring.

“You said ‘her’,” Sherlock mutters, a light coming to his eyes. His heart pounds, and he blinks, once, twice; starting the clock again.

_It’s not over._

 


End file.
